By Antonis Stroggylakis/ info@eurohoops.net
The Israeli basketball championship will begin again on June 20, the board of directors of the Winner League decided. Winner League announced the detailed program and the stages that will lead to the gradual resumption of the season and its completion with the traditional Final Four format.
Winner League will complete an “organizational period” on May 17 and then all players will enter a two-week quarantine period the same day. Once the quarantine is over on May 31, practices will begin and the matches are expected to start on June 20 with Round 22 of the championship.
The best-of-three quarterfinal series will then be played and the Final Four is scheduled for the last week of July. This may create a conflicting schedule with EuroLeague that has marked 4 to 26 of July as the period when the organization wants to hold the potential final phase of 2019-2020.
All remaining Winner League action will be held in the home arenas of the clubs and without any fan attendance. Each team will play two games a week.
When the 2019-2020 season in Israel was suspended on March 13, reigning champion Maccabi Tel Aviv was leading the standings at a 19 – 2 record. Hapoel Jerusalem was second at 17 – 4.